


Rules of Engagement

by sylviarachel



Series: Experiments, Negotiations, and Cups of Tea [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, POV John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has got some things he needs to say. Sherlock wishes John wouldn't fuss. Mycroft worries about his brother <i>constantly</i>. Lestrade has known all along.</p><p>Sequel(ish) to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/961674">"Experiments"</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rules of Engagement

It’s become a thing they do, somehow, snogging on the sofa (in the kitchen, up against the sitting-room wall), part of life at 221B Baker Street the way – apparently – everyone else has been assuming it was all along, and John has stopped trying to figure out how this can possibly be happening to him and started to just enjoy it, and it’s nice and warm in the flat tonight and somehow everyone’s out of his shirt and John happens to look down, nestling his head into Sherlock’s bare right shoulder, and sees the scars on Sherlock’s left arm.

This is, John realizes, the first time he’s ever seen Sherlock’s arms above the elbow. The exquisitely tailored suits, the elegant shirts, the extravagant dressing-gowns – even the sheet he walks around the flat in when he can’t be arsed to put clothes on: calculated to hide the evidence?

Sherlock senses his hesitation, follows his gaze. Frowns.

“I was bored,” he says. Closed, defensive. As if John is prying – which maybe he is. “It was years ago.”

“You were unhappy,” says John. Gently, slowly – so Sherlock can, if he wants, tell him to stop – he strokes his thumb over the thin, straight scar-lines. Sherlock shivers, but doesn’t pull away or otherwise object.

“I hadn’t met you yet,” he says, in a tone which suggests this is all the explanation necessary.

John goes very still. “Don’t,” he says. His voice sounds harsher than he intended. “Don’t do that.”

“What?” Genuine bafflement in Sherlock’s voice, in his expression. “Don’t do what?”

“ _That_ ,” says John. “You told me not to make people into heroes,” he says, “and now you’re doing it. To me. Don’t.”

“This isn’t about your being a _hero_ ,” Sherlock objects. “It’s about your being _John_.”

John takes a deep breath. Lets it out in a huff.

“I can’t,” he says. It hurts to say it, but: “I can’t … have that much … power over you. You can’t ask me to … to be … Sherlock, I–”

“You take care of people,” Sherlock says, very softly. His voice low and rough, as if something’s constricting his airway; his hands around John’s elbows, softly holding on. A grounding touch – grounding himself, too? “It’s what you do. Protect. Defend. Patch up, tidy up after. The good doctor. You can’t _not_ do it.” Pause. “You take care of me, John. You’ve been taking care of me since the day we met. Keeping me alive. I’ve never asked you to; you just _do_.”

“That’s different,” John says. Struggling to articulate it to himself. To not be distracted by Sherlock’s silken skin under his hands, by the scent of him, by the damned come-hither eyes, God. “Stopping you from getting shot or blowing yourself up by accident. That’s easy.”

Sherlock huffs a disbelieving laugh.

“Straightforward, I mean,” John clarifies, because yes, okay, _easy_ is one of the things it’s generally not. “Uncomplicated. I just look before we leap, that’s all. When you _let_ me,” he adds, meaningfully. “It’s not …” He looks up at Sherlock, and some part of him, deep down, is falling about laughing at the irony: “It’s not about anyone’s _feelings_.”

Sherlock doesn’t move, speak, or in any other way indicate that he’s even been listening, but John is pretty sure he’s got his full attention.

“Sherlock,” he says, and he almost can’t bear to meet Sherlock’s eyes, to see the things he sees there, but this is the kind of conversation that demands eye contact. “I can’t be the one thing standing between you and self-harm. That’s … too much responsibility for one person. Or too much for me, anyway. I’d make a mess of it, and you would …” He swallows hard, rubs his thumb over the scars. Leans down and kisses them, because he can’t help himself. “And then we would both hate me. I’m sorry, Sherlock, I’m so, so, sorry, but if it’s going to start being like that, I can’t– I can’t–”

“ _Start_?” Sherlock looks incredulous. “ _Start_ being like that? John, sometimes you really are an idiot.”

“I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear that last bit.” Perversely, though, he feels better: this is a much more Sherlock-and-John sort of conversation than the one they were having five seconds ago. When Sherlock’s calling him names, he knows where he is; when Sherlock’s reinventing him as some kind of saviour … “Explain the first bit, please. Slowly and clearly.”

Sherlock sighs theatrically. “You,” he says, almost accusingly, “have been the one thing standing between me and _abject, stultifying boredom_ every day since I met you. And abject, stultifying boredom is what leads to the sort of thing you call ‘self-harm.’ This should not be _news_ , John.”

John isn’t sure how he’s supposed to react to this, what he’s supposed to feel. What he actually feels is terrified. Drowning. Breathless. _Too much._

“Besides,” Sherlock continues, “it isn’t as if the benefits don’t go both ways.”

“What?”

Sherlock waves his free hand impatiently, the familiar _oh, don’t be an idiot!_ gesture. “I cured your limp. You made me … not bored. Seems a fair exchange.”

And the problem with that is, it’s actually a bit true. Possibly … possibly quite a lot true.

“So what you’re saying,” John says, deciding he might as well just roll with the absurdity of this conversation, “what you’re saying is that this is already a frighteningly codependent relationship, which makes your impossible emotional expectations perfectly okay, apparently, and now we’re adding _sex_ to the equation, and you think that’s going to _help_?”

“I don’t have impossible emotional expectations,” says Sherlock, with a level of dignity that only Sherlock could possibly even _attempt_ in this situation, halfway to starkers on the sitting-room sofa with his beautiful, ridiculous hair sticking out in all directions. “I just don’t like being bored, and you don’t bore me. Also” – primly – “you are an extraordinarily good snog.”

John, looking at him – at his excruciatingly correct posture and mad hair and just general _Sherlock-Holmes-ness_ – and starts laughing.

“This,” he finally manages to gasp, “is absolutely, genuinely the _most ridiculous_ thing we have ever done.”

“Need I remind you, again, that you once _invaded Afghanistan_?”

“That wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t just you, yes. Well,” says Sherlock (patiently, reasonably), “neither is this.”

He leans in until he’s breathing right next to John’s left ear, his ear against John’s temple, and gently traces the knotted scar tissue above John’s clavicle. “A reciprocal agreement,” he says quietly. “What about that?”

“Mmm?” Impossible to make words, with Sherlock’s hands all over him and Sherlock’s warm breath against his cheek.

“I won’t cut, and you won’t limp,” Sherlock breathes; “I’ll stay clean, and you’ll keep your gun pointed in the right direction.”

John parses this, freezes; stammers: “How— what makes you think—”

Sherlock pulls back to look him in the eyes. “You can’t honestly have expected me to believe that the Army invalided you home _with your service weapon_.”

“Erm. Well. No.”

“Ergo, you acquired it elsewhere. Not unreasonably difficult, but not easy: it wasn't a whim, you had a reason for wanting it. Now, what reason? You could not have anticipated needing to shoot a serial killer; you had no enemies in London to defend yourself against; why could you possibly have felt you needed a firearm? Conclusion: you were contemplating suicide, and wanted a quick, clean, reliable method ready to hand.” The whole diagnosis is delivered in Sherlock’s calm, clinical consulting-detective voice, but that last sentence ends with a tense quiver.

“Sherlock—”

“Do not. Do not try to tell me I’m wrong.”

John sighs, defeated. “You’re not wrong.”

“We are not other people, John. As you once informed my insufferable brother – and thank you for that, by the way; I shall treasure the memory of his expression forever – we solve crimes, you blog about it—”

“And you forget your pants, yes.” John can’t help it: a grin fights its way onto his face, because-- “You realize, Sherlock, that we missed what may have been the one opportunity of our lives to get off on a sofa at Buckingham Palace.”

And that does it: Sherlock is laughing, Sherlock is _falling about_ laughing, and John is suddenly breathless again, terrified, struck dumb, because of all the people in the world _he_ , John Hamish Watson, is the one, the only one, who makes Sherlock Holmes fall about laughing.

“You … you were explaining to me,” he says finally, when Sherlock is sprawling back against the end of the sofa, catching his breath and wiping his eyes, “how we’re not like other people.”

Sherlock sits up abruptly, like someone’s pulled his strings, and fixes his gaze on John again, intent. “We run toward danger when it would be safer to run away. We consort with criminals and the Met CID. We chase people across rooftops and through sewer tunnels. We are delighted by the prospect of a serial killer.”

“ _You_ are delighted by serial killers,” John says. “I’m just … resigned to them.”

“You shot one,” Sherlock points out, and John doesn’t say anything, because what could he say? “And afterward, we made jokes about it. The _point_ is, John: you can’t expect … this … to follow the pattern of other people’s … relationships.”

“No,” says John, slowly. Considering. “No, I suppose I can’t.” He looks at Sherlock, who’s looking a bit too _done_ now, like he’s explained everything to everyone’s complete satisfaction and can they get back to the snogging now, please? “You realize,” he says, “I’m actually complete rubbish at relationships, and you … well, I don’t know about you and relationships, do I? You’ve not been exactly forthcoming on that front.”

“You’re not rubbish at relationships,” Sherlock says, a bit impatient – and deflecting, John can’t help noticing. “You’ve had loads of them.”

“Sherlock.” John almost can’t believe he has to explain this, but, well, Sherlock. “That’s sort of the _definition_ of ‘rubbish at relationships.’ Well, _a_ definition, anyway,” he amends, thinking of one or two couples he knows who would be _so much better off_ for packing it in and trying something other than being with each other.

“Ah. Yes, I suppose that is one way of looking at it.” Sherlock takes a deep breath. “I expect you’re right about me and relationships,” he says, not looking at John, “but it’s difficult to theorize in the absence of data.”

John blinks, taken aback. Of course, it’s become fairly clear to him that Sherlock doesn’t have a sex life the way other people do, but he’s never actually taken Mycroft’s condescending sniping at face value: all right, Sherlock’s a bit unusual ( _‘A bit unusual’? Is that like ‘a bit of a serial killer’?_ ), but you don’t learn to snog like that without some actual experience. Although, it occurs to John, if anyone _could_ , it would be Sherlock.

“Absence of data?” he asks. “You’re not telling me Mycroft was actually right about that?”

Sherlock makes an impatient _Oh, never mind Mycroft!_ gesture and frowns at John (which is an improvement, really, because at least he’s making eye contact again). “I’m not talking about _sex_. Of course I’ve had sex. It was boring. I’m talking about _relationships_.”

 _Boring?_ John’s spent too much time talking to Sherlock to be insulted by this – if Sherlock were finding snogging him boring, he’d know – but long-term memory flings up a brief, vivid image of one of those covert half-conversations with Mrs Hudson, in the aftermath of the Irene Adler … thing: _Has he ever had any kind of … relationship? How can_ we _not_ know _?_

“So … you haven’t,” he says. “Ever. Also boring?”

“Probably. Anyway: married to my work,” Sherlock reminds him.

“Yes,” John says. “So you said. And yet, somehow,” he waves a hand vaguely at the flat, the sofa, the two of them on it in nothing but their trousers (more or less) and pants, “here we are. So.”

Up go the eyebrows. “So … what?”

“You know what, you pillock.” John suppresses a strong urge to swat him with a cushion. “Why this? Why us, why me? Why, if I like shagging women and you find sex boring and you’re married to your work, are we doing this completely ridiculous thing?”

“I’ve just _said_ ,” says Sherlock, as though John is very, very slow on the uptake (which maybe he is; it wouldn’t be the first time), “I don’t find _you_ boring.”

It shouldn’t sound like a declaration of undying love, John thinks, when the bloke you’ve just been trying to get off with tells you you’re not boring. But, well, Sherlock.

“And, anyway,” Sherlock goes on, sounding oddly hesitant now, “you … the work … everything is all bound up together, now. Somehow. I don’t … the work might not be so … without you.”

“Okay,” John says, disarmed. “Okay: I accept the terms of your agreement.”

Sherlock smiles, one of those just-for-John-Watson smiles, and John thinks, _If anyone else could see that, they’d never call him a sociopath again, damn it_ , and _My God, you terrifying, beautiful man_.

“But,” he says, “I’ve got some terms, too.”

Expectant look, only slightly puzzled. Okay, here we go.

“First thing: I need-- no, _we need_ to be honest with each other.” Sherlock squirms a little. “Trust issues, yeah? I really want to trust you, Sherlock, but I need you to meet me halfway. That means if someone’s threatening my life, you _tell me about it_ and we work out how to deal with it. Or your life, or anybody’s life. If you ever again think you need to fake your own death, Sherlock, I need to know that you won’t leave me on the outside.”

Sherlock nods: once, twice. Tense, contained. Guilty?

“It also means you don’t experiment on me without my consent. The thumbs in the fridge, the retorts on the worktop, whatever, I can go on living with those, just please don’t use the dishes we actually have to eat from, but if there is _ever_ any more administering of experimental substances without prior notification, Sherlock, so help me—”

“Understood,” Sherlock interrupts hastily, nodding in what looks very like alarm. “Absolutely.”

“Right. Okay.” John flattens his hands on his thighs, scrubs his palms against denim. “Second thing: I need you to tell me what … what you’re okay with, and what you’re not. Don’t assume it’s obvious, yeah? And-- and don’t assume I know what I’m doing, because when it comes to … erm … sex with blokes, I really, really don’t.”

Sherlock’s head is tilted, his eyes intent. “I’m not sure,” he says, which is already a startling thing for him to say, but then it gets more startling, “that there’s anything you can think of that I wouldn’t be willing to try. With you. Although,” he adds, straightening abruptly, “I’m afraid I do have to draw the line at … _guests_.”

John is really, really glad they didn’t have this conversation over dinner, because he’s pretty sure that if he’d had anything in his mouth at this point, he’d have choked to death on it. “I-- I don’t expect that’ll be a problem,” he manages to say. He also manages _not_ to say the other thing he’s thinking, which is: _Threesomes? Seriously, Sherlock, WHAT?_

“I’ve shocked you,” Sherlock says. He’s closed up again, and John’s already regretting his instinctive reaction. “I didn’t mean to. I thought— you said _be honest_ , and I thought—”

“Sherlock. It’s fine.” John’s pleased with how calm he sounds. “I’m not shocked.” _Be honest._ “Well, no, okay, I am a bit. But mostly just startled. It’s fine. You don’t want anyone else, I don’t want anyone else, we’re fine. It’s all … fine.”

Sherlock’s uncoiling as he listens, good. Crisis averted. John takes his hand, yields to the impulse to rub his cheek against Sherlock’s knuckles.

“That razor of yours is rubbish,” Sherlock complains. But he splays his long fingers through John’s hair, around his ear and across the back of his head, smiling fondly.

John’s sorely tempted to just lean into the caress, to close his eyes and find Sherlock’s lips again and do what comes naturally until his brain shuts off, but there’s one more thing he needs to say.

“Hang on a minute,” he says, “just— hang on. We need to talk about … what we’re going to tell people.”

Sherlock frowns at him. “Tell people? What people? About what?” Then he seems to notice John’s exasperation and says, carefully, “Oh. You mean …”

“Yes.”

“You do realize, of course, that they’ve already made certain assumptions.” He’s studying John as if John has possibly somehow forgotten what got them into this situation in the first place.

“I do realize that, yes. So that’s the plan, is it, just let them carry on thinking what they’re already thinking?”

Sherlock shrugs. “You’ve stopped correcting them. I, as you pointed out last week, never started. Does there need to be some sort of dramatic public announcement?”

“I—” John stops abruptly, torn between _Yes, of course,_ and _Oh, my God, no,_ and _What the hell does it matter anyway? Everyone thinks they understand this, and nobody really does._ “No, I don’t know. Maybe not. We know, and that’s what matters.”

“Exactly.” Sherlock gives him a satisfied nod. Then he reaches for John and closes the distance between them and no one says anything much for quite a long time.

* * *

“He used to cut himself,” John says. “Did you know about that?”

Greg looks alarmed. “That was years ago,” he says. “Don’t tell me he’s started that again?”

“No,” John says, and downs about half his pint of stout in one go. “He says he did it because he was bored, and now he’s not bored, and _do stop fussing, John_. I just … I wish someone had _told_ me.”

“Hang on,” Greg says. “How are you just working this out _now_? I mean, not that I’d expect him to actually tell you, but, well, I reckon it’d be hard to miss once you got his clothes off.”

“Yes,” says John, “yes, it was.”

He stares into his pint glass, waiting for Greg to work it out. It doesn’t take long.

“So you’re telling me you really weren’t—”

“No.”

“But now you are?”

“Yes.” John lifts his glass, drinks, sets it down. “And it’s bloody terrifying, Greg. It’s like living in a minefield.”

“Well,” Greg says. “Yeah, I suppose it would be. But it always was, wasn’t it?”

John’s phone buzzes. He reaches into his pocket, glances quickly at it under the table:

_Why are you talking to Lestrade about me? –SH_

“Who _signs their texts_ , Greg?” he demands. “Honestly, who?”

 _because you’re a secretive wanker_ , he replies, not bothering to ask how Sherlock knows; and then, because while perfectly true that wasn’t very kind, _be home soon. fancy a chinese?_

“Holmeses,” says Greg, and, in a passable imitation of Sherlock’s posh dark-chocolate voice, “Obviously.”

John laughs at him, and Greg looks inexplicably relieved.

“Look,” he says, staring at the bottom of his glass again. “I just … I’d like to know where the UXBs are.”

Greg sighs. “So would we all, mate.”

John’s phone buzzes again.

 _No,_ he reads. _I’m taking you out for dinner. Meet me at Angelo’s in half an hour. -SH_

John doesn’t realize he’s grinning until Greg says, “He’s been mad about you from the start, you know.”

John blinks at him.

“You can’t blame us for thinking … what we thought. You have to understand, John, I’d been working with him for five years, off and on, I’d hauled him off to rehab once and talked his brother out of having him sectioned, I’d seen him do a lot of brilliant things and a _lot_ of idiotic ones, but I’d never seen him ask someone’s opinion, much less _listen_ to it when he got it.”

“He called me an idiot,” John points out. “At that first crime scene – he said we both had _ordinary little brains_ , I think it was, and accused me of having no imagination. And went off in a taxi and left me to wander about Brixton and be kidnapped by his brother.”

“He listened to you,” Greg counters. “Look, I expect Sherlock is a terrible …” (John watches, amused, as he searches for an acceptable term) “ _whatever_ , but never think it’s because he isn’t completely mad about you. He’s just …”

John understands that vague _I-can’t-explain-this-but-you-know-what-I-mean_ gesture only too well. “Sherlock,” he says.

* * *

This is not the first time John has been effusively welcomed to Angelo’s, presented with candles to make things more romantic, and been told his meal is on the house because he’s Sherlock’s date (he’s felt less guilty about this since the time he spotted Sherlock slipping cash into the till while the staff had their backs turned). It’s just the first time that last bit has actually been _true_. So he’s not surprised, when he turns up twenty-nine minutes after Sherlock’s text, to be escorted to a candlelit table and presented with a bottle of probably quite expensive wine, although the flowers are a bit of a surprise. Billy the maître-d’ seats him with a flourish, and he’s just got fairly started on puzzling over the flowers when Sherlock sweeps in, all rumpled curls and melodramatic overcoat with the collar up, and takes the chair opposite and _looks_ at him in a way that completely does away with his ability to reason.

“The flowers,” he eventually manages. “Are lovely. Thank you.” Actually the flowers themselves are a bit peculiar, but nobody has ever given John flowers before and it’s unexpectedly endearing.

“The flowers are a _message_ ,” Sherlock says, not sulking yet but hovering on the brink of a sulk: John has misunderstood somehow. “I was doing research, while you were gossiping with Lestrade.”

He leans forward, one arm on the table, and points. “Box: constancy. Campanula: gratitude. Ivy: faithfulness. Rue: repentance. White heather: protection. Delphinium: affection and joy. Phlox: harmony.”

Of course. “Sherlock—”

“I know I’m not good at this,” Sherlock says, waving a hand at the flowers, the table, the two of them, “this _dating_ thing, but I’m _trying_. There are so many _rules_ , it’s--”

“Sherlock.” John captures one of the flailing hands and squeezes it gently. “Shut up.”

Sherlock does, and John – moving quickly, so as not to give him time to misunderstand – stands up, takes two steps around the table, pulls him up out of his chair, and kisses him as thoroughly as is consistent with not getting tossed out of the place for public indecency.

He vaguely hears wolf-whistles and scattered applause, someone calling, “Take it outside, mates,” and someone else, “I’ll have what he’s having!”

_Tossers._

“You,” he whispers fiercely into Sherlock’s astonished face, “are _completely ridiculous_. And I am completely mad about you, and what you need to do is _stop worrying_ about whatever idiotic dating rules you think you’re breaking.”

Sherlock blinks at him. “You are?” he says. He looks so dazed that John wonders whether he should be panicking about the possible ingestion of toxic substances.

Instead he says, very firmly, “Yes.”

Then he makes Sherlock sit down again, and sits down himself, and they order food and drink wine and eat (even Sherlock) and talk, more or less like normal people on a normal date (well, it’s possible normal people would talk more about politics or crap telly and less about forensic pathology), and John is ridiculously happy and wonders why he didn’t do this ages ago.

* * *

After that, John also isn’t particularly surprised when they step out of the restaurant and find the long black car waiting at the kerb. Sherlock looks furious and tries to walk away, but John reckons they might as well get it over with, and when the door opens he ducks into the back of the car willingly enough.

“Mycroft,” says Sherlock, tight-lipped. “To what do we owe the dubious honour?”

“Oh, I think you know,” says Mycroft.

He looks from one of them to the other, lifting a mocking eyebrow at the flowers in John’s hand, and John finds himself wondering whether he’s detecting their pheromones on each other or something and whether Mycroft can tell how very much he, John, was looking forward to getting Sherlock out of his clothes before they spotted the mood-killing shiny black car.

“Is this,” John says, because he’s _really tired_ of Mycroft turning up and making Sherlock furious and stroppy and just generally a pain in the arse, “where you threaten me with an excruciatingly slow death if I break your little brother’s heart?”

Mycroft raises one eyebrow and looks down his nose at John. “I did hope that part would go without saying.”

He shifts his gaze to Sherlock, who, John sees out of the corner of his eye, is pretending to be lounging in utter boredom. He’s doing a piss-poor job of it: John needs only a glance to see how tense and wary he is. _Damn it, Mycroft. Just one bloody spur-of-the-moment dinner date, can we not have even that?_

“I thought,” says Sherlock distantly, “you thought I hadn’t got one.”

“It would make my life _so_ much easier if that were true,” Mycroft snaps. “Sherlock, you are a _child_. You have not the faintest idea what being in a romantic relationship involves. What could _possibly_ make you believe that this is a good idea?”

Sherlock, to John’s astonishment, reaches towards him without looking and grabs his free hand. “John,” he says.

For a second John thinks this is some kind of appeal to him to answer Mycroft’s question, and then he realizes, no, this is Sherlock’s answer, _he_ is Sherlock’s answer, and how bloody terrifying is that?

Mycroft looks dubious as only Mycroft can.

“Goodbye, Mycroft,” John says firmly.

He reaches for the door handle, half expecting it to be locked, but the door opens onto Northumberland Street and they’re out of the car and the car, thank God, is gliding away and Sherlock—

“You,” Sherlock breathes, “are _astonishing_.”

“I’m – really not.” John does not feel astonishing; he does feel a bit breathless from being backed against a lamppost and snogged like … like a very thoroughly snogged person.

He smiles up at Sherlock. “Get us a taxi,” he says. “It’s time we were off home.”


End file.
